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Rescued piano-trio sets: Bill Evans and Michel Petrucciani

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My first exposure to the remarkable French pianist Michel Petrucciani was a record marking his early outburst onto the international jazz scene as a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1982.  Despite the rapport with audiences Lloyd had dependably, I never warmed to his playing, which seemed a bit like  John Coltrane watered down for jazz-curious hippies. It takes an assertive pianist to carve out a firm profile in any quartet led by a saxophonist (classic case in point: McCoy Tyner with Coltrane). The freedom Petrucciani displays in this two-disc set takes the form of a loosened, more expansive style that eliminates the need to compete in facility and impact with anyone else on the bandstand.  The pianist's performance on this gig displays the torrential energy typical of his playing, his strong hands belying the fragility of his body, which was hobbled by a brittle-bones disease (osteogenesis imperfecta) that subjected him to frequent inju...
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'Birth of the Cool,' a title with marketing and creative genius behind it, gets welcome revival here

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One of the landmark small groups in jazz was the nonet that also gave birth to a new branch on the living jazz tree. The growth of a way of playing and writing that owed nothing to bebop and very little to the fading swing era came about in three recording sessions in 1949 and 1950, later to be packaged as a Capitol LP titled "The Birth of the Cool." Kent Hickey put together ensemble for centennial tribute.  Miles Davis was the leader, and his style in these settings raised his profile in the jazz community. This is his centennial year, and so Kent Hickey,  a trumpeter from a much younger generation and one of local renown, took up the birthday banner to lead nine musicians re-creating "The Birth of the Cool."  The band sounded great Tuesday night at the Jazz Kitchen . The driving sound of something new still adheres to "Move," a Denzil Best composition that led off the performance, as it did the original LP issue. That's not counting the short appetiz...
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Mitzi Westra guides a stylish tour through art song in Romance languages

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Mitzi Westra's performances are well-remembered.   Mezzo-soprano Mitzi Westra minded her academic Ps and Qs while also  singing with buoyant freedom and expressive heft in a faculty recital Monday night at the University of Indianapolis. "Romance Languages" was the rubric under which selections of Italian, Portuguese, French, and Italian art songs were artfully placed with spoken introductions emphasizing the diction challenges in each of the four languages. The lecture element was succeeded by her enchanting  interpretations, accompanied insightfully by Elisabeth Hoegberg, piano, in Ruth Lilly Performance Hall, Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center .  I have long been pleased to attend Westra's performances, usually in context with other singers, and significantly in such crowd favorites as Handel's "Messiah." The way she put across such alto arias as "He was despised" and "O Thou, That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion"  alone has provide...
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Choosing bang over whimper: Phoenix Theatre's 'Wasabia' explores end games

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Vivian exults in partnering with Di and Val. Like any other sport, warming up for death may be a fitness regime, or it may look like death warmed over. The tension between approaches to the final chapter facing everyone may invite more than a touch of humor.  Wendy Herlich went full bore into mortality's comic potential in writing "Wasabia," a 2024 one-act that the Phoenix Theatre is opening this weekend in the Basile Theater. The booklet for the new production, directed by Brian Balcom on the Phoenix's Basile Stage, carries a playwright's note that indicates personal reasons for dealing with death unflinchingly, as well as humorously. She has centered the emotional glitch that brings humor into play in several episodes that involve two secondary characters in various guises, representing drugs used in assisted suicide.  Legal protection for the choice is under consideration or approved among an increasing number of states. That trend is the subject of one of the...
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Israeli Chamber Project puts its own stamp on 'Eroica' Symphony

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  Antje Weithaas is ensemble guest on this tour.  After lighter music of great polish and right to the point of coordinated virtuosity occupied the first half, the visiting Israeli Chamber Project, including a guest violinist from Germany, Antje Weithaas , moved into high seriousness with the advantage of familiarity after intermission.   Ensemble Music Society presented the seven visiting musicians in an arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, op. 55 ("Eroica") at the Indiana History Center Wednesday night. Many in the audience had recently experienced the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's performance of the original work under music director Jun M ä rkl's inspired direction. The appropriately well-designed arrangement by Yuval Shapiro was superbly played by the visitors. Simply the repeat of the exposition in the first movement held additional interest that the full-orchestra account wouldn't necessarily provide.  There were details brought out...
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Wrestling with eastern Europe: IVCI laureate Shannon Lee in duo violin-piano recital, no holds barred

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Shannon Lee impressed the IVCI jury in 2018. As compatible as pianists working with IVCI participants have long been, new competition terrain in true duo partnership was explored Tuesday night with the Indianapolis return of Shannon Lee, a laureate in the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. For five years, the Canadian violinist has been collaborating with Russian-born pianist Arseniy Gusev. That's included two recordings that were reflected in the program they offered at the Indiana History Center. Composers have long emphasized equality between the two instruments in bringing their respective techniques and modes of expression into partnership. Works for violin and piano, many of them sonatas, abound in the repertoire.  It was like catnip to the acknowledged master Elliott Carter, an explorer of oppositions in music who found the instruments' physical differences — "between stroking and striking," as he put it — a delectable challenge in creatin...
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How does your garden grow? ICO asks, with added color

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Martinez plays Falla masterpiece with the ICO.   Marketing this month's Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra concert had the advantage of a glamorous guest soloist, and the organization even used most of the phrase in the title of the work Gabriela Martinez  played in labeling the performance.  "Gardens of Spain" was the concert's billing, highlighting the pianist's  performance with the orchestra in Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain." Still, the ICO didn't sell short the world premiere also on the program: a new work by the prolific composer Stacy Garrop, alluringly titled "Chroma," a six-movement salute to colors that the fine lighting system of the Schrott Center illuminated as the composition unfolded under the astute direction of Matthew Kraemer. I first became acquainted with Garrop's artistry in concert more than a dozen years ago with her folklore-linked "Silver Dagger." Since then, when the Lincoln ...
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